The following is an op-ed written by Jeff Hunerlach of the Humboldt-Del Norte County Building and Construction Trades Council and Tom Wheeler of the Environmental Protection Information Center.

The Outpost will have a full report on this issue soon. The board of the Humboldt Bay Harbor, Recreation and Conservation District will hold a hearing about this matter at its regular meeting tomorrow night.

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Offshore wind offers enormous potential — for our planet and for our local communities. But to realize that potential, we need to ensure that offshore wind works for the local communities. Local labor and environmentalists are united in a blue-green alliance to solve our climate crisis in a way that builds a clean, thriving, and equitable economy.

Environmentalists stand with Labor in our shared push that the working people of this area benefit from the jobs created by offshore wind. Offshore wind in Humboldt County offers an opportunity to serve as a national example for how to build a thriving green economy: hundreds of blue-collar, family-wage jobs building our renewable energy future. To do this, however, we need firm commitments from the Harbor District through a project labor agreement.

A Project Labor Agreement (PLA) is an agreement negotiated between project developers and labor unions that set forth the terms and conditions for all craft works. The Humboldt-Del Norte County Building and Construction Trades Council has worked with the Harbor District for years to develop a project labor agreement that prioritizes the working people of this region by giving hiring preferences to local and tribal citizens, while providing apprenticeship opportunities for aspiring blue-collar workers.

Currently, our region lacks enough good-paying, skilled job openings to offer stable career options for local residents or to keep our current local workforce local. As a result, the region’s skilled workers are increasingly having to travel to the Bay Area or Central Valley for work. It also drains talent from our region, and reduces the economic benefits of their employment, as their earnings are largely spent far from their home communities. This cycle compounds our region’s ongoing economic struggles, and unless we take action, those struggles will continue to plague us. The negotiations between the Harbor District and the Humboldt-Del Norte County Building and Construction Trades Council have produced a PLA that will create good-paying, safe, and environmentally sustainable jobs right here in Humboldt County.

The tide can turn with the passage of this negotiated PLA, by bringing high-road jobs back to our region. The signing of this PLA only marks the beginning of many years of work to build back a strong labor force through new paid training programs and apprenticeship programs offered by the Humboldt-Del Norte County Building and Construction Trades Council.

Labor stands with environmentalists in our shared push that port development be completed in a sustainable way, that pushes the boundaries of what is possible to reduce emissions from port activities. Ports are notorious for noxious emissions from heavy diesel machinery. Developing a new port for the offshore wind industry offers an opportunity to do things differently from the outset.

Not only is a clean, green port good for the environment, but it is also good for workers and adjacent communities. Electrifying heavy machinery when feasible means more than greenhouse gasses saved, it also means fewer NOx, SOx and other conventional air pollutants and quieter work environments. Pushing for a modern port, however, is going to take the combined power of organized labor and environmentalists.

As we move forward through this process, our alliance knows that there is more work to do as it relates to further expanding and strengthening targeting preferences for our local communities and tribal nations in order to deliver on the promise of a green economy. We remain committed to those goals. To ensure port development benefits all, we are also excited to craft and support future agreements that guarantee safe working conditions and strong protections for vulnerable people in our community.

Please join EPIC and your local Building Trades workers in supporting the passage of this PLA. We owe it to our workers, communities and the environment to pass this PLA and secure a brighter, more sustainable future for everyone.

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Jeff Hunerlach, Secretary/Treasurer, Humboldt-Del Norte County Building and Construction Trades Council

Tom Wheeler, Executive Director, Environmental Protection Information Center

In a Zoom press conference this morning, state Senator Mike McGuire announced that the state will be funding the purchase of 10 new fire engines for local fire districts in Northern Mendocino and Southern Humboldt counties

The engines will by pickup-style “Type 6” engines that are especially useful in back roads in rural areas, and they will replace “antiquated” versions of the equipment, according to McGuire.

Among the agencies to receive the vehicles are the Briceland, Whitethorn, Garberville, Palo Verde, Telegraph Ridge, Piercy and Leggett volunteer fire departments.

In addition to the new trucks, McGuire announced that the Bell Springs, Whale Gulch, Alderpoint, Redway and Shelter Cove volunteer fire departments will receive training opportunities and grant-writing support.

Nickolas Pape, chief of the Shelter Cove fire department, said during the conference that the engines will support the work of local strike teams in the event of wildfire, and should allow local departments to attack emerging wildfires more quickly.

“Every large fire starts as a small fire, and if we can put the fires out at a quarter-acre, we don’t need to spend millions and billions of dollars on these million-acre fires,” he said.

Pape, who said that local departments hope to have the new engines in service sometime in the middle of next year, added that the engines will also be useful in situations other than wildland fire, such as car crashes, medical calls, and search and rescue operations.

McGuire also announced $6 million in funding for wildfire prevention efforts throughout the North Coast, with nearly $1 million of that earmarked for Humboldt County. These funds will be distributed through grants open to local fire departments, special districts and nonprofit organizations, McGuire said, and will be used for projects such as vegetation removal and the constructions of firebreaks around communities.

Eighteen people died in the San Diego County jail system in 2021, the most in-custody deaths ever recorded there. Local officials expressed consternation. State representatives demanded answers. Calls for change rang out.

The next year, another 18 people died in custody. San Diego County jails, which house an average of 3,800 people per day, are among the state’s deadliest.

So far this year, 11 people have died in San Diego County jails, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune.

It’s not just San Diego. Six California county jail systems recorded record inmate deaths in 2022, according to California Department of Justice data dating to 2005. Solano County was one of them. Five people died in a system that houses an average of just 500 people per day.

Those numbers are alarming to advocates for incarcerated people and for state lawmakers who have struggled to adopt a statewide response to the deaths. Locally elected sheriffs manage jails, and they report to the county boards of supervisors that set their budgets.

Now a bill written by a powerful legislator from San Diego could upend California’s county jail systems by putting a “detention monitor” in jails to serve as a kind of statewide inspector general. Senate leader Toni Atkins said the bill would force sheriffs to disclose more information to the public about in-custody deaths.

At a hearing on the bill last month, Democrat Atkins said the boards of supervisors are responsible for “settling lawsuits involving in-custody jail deaths, but have limited authority in requiring the Sheriff’s Department to enact policies to reduce in-custody deaths.”

Atkins at the hearing said San Diego County has spent nearly $50 million to settle in-custody death lawsuits in just the last five years.

Her bill has two central features: the detention monitor, and a measure that would grant more public access to in-custody death reports.

California sheriffs fighting new oversight

Predictably the plan has drawn fire from law enforcement groups, who will have until the legislative session ends Sept. 14 to lobby for changes to the bill.

Atkins has already revised the bill to address some criticism. The bill as she originally submitted it would have gone much further by authorizing counties to create their own local departments of corrections, taking jails away from sheriffs. That plan fell apart after lobbying from law enforcement, Atkins said, and “as a sign of good faith” to those groups, she replaced the idea with the monitor to provide “alternative accountability.”

County sheriffs say the current version of the bill would create redundant layers of oversight in a system they say is already sufficiently policed, specifically by an agency called the California Board of State and Community Corrections.

“I think that there’s this misconception that there’s these unruly deaths that are occurring inside our jail facilities,” Tulare County Sheriff Mike Boudreaux, president of the California State Sheriffs’ Association, told CalMatters.

“But the reality of it is, we provide state-of-the-art medical attention, counseling services, social services, mental health services all up and down the state of California that’s required by the state and is also overseen by the Board of State and Community Corrections, right? So this bill really becomes a duplicate of things that really are already in place when we have a death in our jail.”

Boudreaux said jails are unfairly blamed for deaths that would have happened anyway among people with preexisting health conditions. Another problem, he said, was preventing suicides.

“You know, we don’t ever hear the data about those that we prevented from committing suicide in the hundreds,” Boudreaux said. “We’ve caught many, many people (attempting to commit) suicide and help them, many people that came in with medical conditions that they would have never received medical treatment (for) out on the streets, now are receiving medical care inside the jail.

“But the fact of the matter is, people die. And are they dying at the hands of jail staff and sheriff’s offices? No, that’s not what’s occurring.”

One attorney who often takes cases involving in-custody deaths in the Sacramento County jail system doesn’t anticipate the bill having much of an effect.

“I don’t see this streamlining things and producing a flood of, you know, useful information,” said Mark Merin, a Sacramento attorney.

Among the exemptions in the bill are that any refusal to disclose information by the jail can be challenged before a judge who has access to nonpublic information, a process called “in camera review.” That, Merin said, will drag out the disclosure process for months, or longer.

San Diego jail on the hot seat

Advocates argue the record number of deaths in counties like San Diego and Solano is a crisis and maintaining the status quo would be a clear sign that jail inmates’ lives do not matter.

In San Diego, the civilian review board that oversees the jail system has proposed handing over medical care to the county health department. That would strip the responsibility from Sheriff Kelly Martinez.

Martinez refused to speak to CalMatters about the Atkins bill, citing pending litigation.

A report commissioned by that group, the Citizens’ Law Enforcement Review Board in San Diego, found that “elevated risk of death appears to be isolated to the unsentenced jail population.”

Indeed, of the 18 people who died in custody in San Diego County jails in 2022, 17 were awaiting trial.

The report commissioned by the civilian review board followed a February 2022 report from the state Auditor’s Office that found due to “the (San Diego) Sheriff’s Department’s inadequate response to deaths, and the lack of effective independent oversight, we believe that the Legislature must take action to ensure that the Sheriff’s Department implements meaningful changes.”

Paul Parker, the civilian review board’s executive director, testified in support of Atkins’ bill. He is trying to push for access to medical reports of in-custody deaths, something he said the civilian oversight board needs to do its job effectively.

“What we’re trying to do is get jurisdiction over the medical and mental health care providers,” Parker said. “We don’t have jurisdiction to look at what they’ve done, we can only look at what the sworn (sheriff’s department employees) have done.

“How the heck am I supposed to look at an in-custody death if I can’t look at the medical and mental health care provided to that person? I’m only getting half the story, right? Because we contend that there are probably issues with the medical and mental health care being provided, either substandard or derelict, in some way, shape or form.”

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CalMatters.org is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media venture explaining California policies and politics.

Last November, 59% of voters in Berkeley wanted to give the city permission to borrow $650 million to fund affordable housing.

Two years earlier, 58% of San Diego voters supported a $900 million housing bond.

Two years before that, in 2018, commanding majorities in San Jose (64%), Santa Rosa (62%) and Santa Cruz County (just over 55%) turned out to back housing bonds worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

All five measures failed.

The California constitution doesn’t make it easy for local governments to issue IOUs. Not only are most types of municipal and county borrowing plans required to go before the electorate, once on the ballot they also have to win support from at least two-thirds of the voters to pass.

Now, as state lawmakers scramble to put a lid on ever-increasing housing costs, a persistent homelessness crisis and growing public ire over both, a coalition of housing developers, unions, local governments and pro-housing groups want to lower that electoral bar for bonds and taxes that fund affordable housing and a wide array of public infrastructure projects.

The new proposed threshold: 55%. Had that standard been in place in 2018, Berkeley, San Diego, San Jose, Santa Rosa and Santa Cruz County would have been granted the power to borrow a total of $2.26 billion.

Spearheading the effort to amend the state constitution is Assemblymember Cecilia Aguiar-Curry — and not for the first time. The Davis Democrat has introduced a version of the bill every session since joining the Legislature in 2017. It’s never made it out of the Assembly.

But proponents think this year could be different. The Assembly’s new speaker, Robert Rivas, has named housing a top priority and has shown an early willingness to push his preferred housing bills, even over the objections of powerful committee chairpersons. Rivas is a co-author of Aguiar-Curry’s bill, along with roughly half the Assembly.

Aguiar-Curry may also have a bit more negotiating weight to throw around this time, too. Rivas named her speaker pro tem, his second in command, upon assuming the leadership role this summer.

Meanwhile, public concern about housing has not gone away.

“If we’re gonna do these big statewide efforts, ensuring the locals also do their piece and have the tools they need to meet us halfway is really important.”
Abram Diaz, policy director for the Non-Profit Housing Association of Northern California

If the proposed constitutional amendment makes it through the Legislature, where it would require (what else?) two-thirds of the vote to pass, it would then go before voters statewide on the November 2024 ballot.

It would be in good company. Alongside initiatives and referenda proposed by private citizens and interest groups, the Legislature is considering a handful of other proposed constitutional changes and as many as 10 statewide bonds, including a $10 billion affordable housing measure.

Aguiar-Curry, who used to be the mayor of semi-rural town of Winters, said her measure may help cure some of the defects she sees with those colossal statewide bonds that often most benefit bigger cities.

“When you pass some of these big time bonds, we don’t see the money,” she said in an interview. “Every community has different needs, but for a lot of us in rural communities, it’s hard to get bonds passed.”

Making it easier for local governments to raise funds for affordable housing will also make it easier for those governments to compete for matching state and federal cash, said Abram Diaz, policy director for the Non-Profit Housing Association of Northern California, which supports the amendment.

“If we’re gonna do these big statewide efforts, ensuring the locals also do their piece and have the tools they need to meet us halfway is really important,” he said.

Many of the state’s business groups and the California Association of Realtors oppose the measure, reluctant to take any steps that would make it easier for local governments to hike taxes or run up their debts. Most bonds issued by local governments are paid out of increased property taxes.

For many defenders of California’s long-time restrictions on local taxation — namely, Proposition 13 from 1978 — Aguiar-Curry’s measure represents a fiscal Pandora’s box.

“It’s a slippery slope,” said Newport Beach Assemblymember Diane Dixon, a Republican, at a recent Assembly hearing. “There are always attempts to undo Prop. 13 and the two-thirds vote, and it’s just a pincer attack.”

Learning from schools

The space between 55% and two-thirds of the vote is where many ballot measures go to die.

In 2022, cities, counties, schools and special districts put a total of 59 revenue-raisers requiring two-thirds of the vote to pass on local ballots across California, according to data compiled by local government fiscal analyst Michael Coleman. Only 29 of those measures cleared that threshold. Of the 30 that failed, 16 received more than 55% of the vote.

“Why should one-third of the local voters have the power to overrule fiscal decisions in your community?” Aguiar-Curry said.

That’s been a major source of fiscal frustration for cities and counties. But for the last two decades, school districts have been the exception. Thanks to Proposition 39, a constitutional amendment passed by voters in 2000, local school bond measures only need to hit a 55% cut off to pass, so long as they’re used to fund facility construction and upgrades and don’t exceed a certain amount.

That’s been “a real game changer for schools,” said Coleman.

You can see that in the election results. Over the last two decades, local governments have turned to the voters more than 5,000 times, begging permission to raise taxes or borrow money, according to Coleman’s database.

Since 2001, city and county bond and tax measures that have been required to get two-thirds of the vote have succeeded just more than half the time. School bonds with a 55% threshold have cleared that requirement 80% of the time.

No surprise, then, that affordable housing developers want in on some of that special treatment.

So, too, do organizations representing firefighters, librarians and school employees, public sector workers and construction unions. Alongside affordable housing projects, Aguiar-Curry’s proposal would lower the voter requirement for bonds and taxes that fund all manner of “public infrastructure” projects, including road, highway and transit improvements; water and flood control upgrades; hospital, police station and library construction; and the purchase of firefighting equipment.

And going further than Prop. 39, Aguiar-Curry’s measure sets no limits on the amount of borrowing. Nor is it just restricted to bonds, which are frequently paid back through property tax increases, but would free local governments to propose new parcel tax increases and sales tax hikes.

Assemblywoman Cecilia Aguiar-Curry at a press conference during a visit to Las Casitas mobile home park in American Canyon on Oct. 30, 2019. Photo by Anne Wernikoff for CalMatters

Opponents of the measure, led by the nonprofit California Taxpayers Association, have seized on that final detail.

“The taxes this measure would make it easier to pass are regressive,” said Peter Blocker, the organization’s lobbyist, at the recent hearing. “And while one of the goals of the measure is to make it easier to raise revenue for housing, the two taxes this measure applies to — sales taxes and parcel taxes — are both taxes that make housing less affordable.”

Tacking on these other areas of infrastructure spending and giving local governments more financial flexibility to use the measure has helped Aguiar-Curry build a coalition. Proponents insist it’s also sensible policy.

“This thought that we can do this for housing and not infrastructure doesn’t work,” said Assemblymember Lori Wilson, a Suisun City Democrat, at the hearing. “You can’t build housing without infrastructure.”

Proponents also insist, over the objections of anti-tax advocates, that the measure would do nothing to directly increase debt or raise taxes. If voters pass the measure in 2024, it would simply provide local governments with new tools to combat the housing crisis.

But voters could put those tools to work immediately in some parts of the state.

As currently written, the Aguiar-Curry amendment would apply to any local revenue-raiser passed “on or after” the amendment itself is passed — meaning, to any other measure also on the November 2024 ballot.

That’s a pertinent detail for voters across the Bay Area, who are likely to be presented with a regional affordable housing bond as large as $20 billion next November. If Aguiar-Curry’s measure makes the ballot, too, that would give millions of Northern California voters the opportunity not only to vote on the largest housing-related IOU in recent California memory, but also on a provision to ease its passage.

“If this passes in November, the lower threshold applicability will apply to other housing bonds that are also on the ballot so that they can really harness this new tool,” said Diaz with the Non-Profit Housing Association. “We don’t have a day to waste as we try to address the homeless crisis.”

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CalMatters.org is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media venture explaining California policies and politics.

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There are several big improvements slated for the California Redwood Coast-Humboldt County Airport. In just a few days, the county is going to shut down ACV for two weeks to accommodate much-needed improvements to the airport’s main runway, which was last rehabilitated nearly 30 years ago. Along with that, aviation staff are looking at some big-picture improvements to curtail flight delays.

During today’s regular meeting, the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors took its first look at the preliminary findings of a study looking at the feasibility of implementing an enhanced Instrument Landing System that would significantly reduce aircraft diversions, delays and cancellations at the airport.

Cody Roggatz, Humboldt County’s Director of Aviation, acknowledged the airport’s history of delayed departures and cancellations but maintained that it is “on par with the national average.”

Roggatz

“We often hear from the public about people not flying from ACV because the fog cancels all of the flights or delays all of the flights. That isn’t the case,” Roggatz said. “We are actually right on par with the national average for cancellation rates and delays, but we understand that the fog can be a challenge at times. We’ve started exploring what we can do to improve our performance and be better with the on-time and cancellation rates, be better than that national average, and that led us, of course, to the Instrument Landing System.”

The Humboldt County Airport’s existing Instrument Landing System uses a Category I approach, meaning it can only accommodate incoming aircraft when the visibility is more than half a mile or when the cloud ceiling is 200 feet above the runway. A Category II system, on the other hand, can accommodate a minimum visibility of 1,200 feet (just under a quarter-mile) and a 100-foot cloud ceiling.

Paul Hannah, Chief Flight Operations Engineer for Lean Technology Corporation, one of the entities the county hired to perform the feasibility study, said visibility is generally at its worst between July and December, causing more delayed departures and cancellations at the airport. He gestured to the graph below, which depicts the average weather conditions at the airport for every hour of each month.

“These percentages break down to the way that airlines, in particular, think about the airport and how they make their scheduling decisions on when they want to come into the airport,” Hannah said. “Here we are in August, and this morning the visibility was less than a half mile. If there was an airline that wanted to come into the airport in the morning [and] they look at the current situation, they know that there’s basically a 60 percent chance. To put that in perspective, for a hub airport like San Francisco, that number would be 99 [percent].” 

A Category II approach Instrument Landing System would bring ACV up to par with most other airports, he said, bringing the likelihood of landing on a foggy August morning up to 90 percent.

Once the feasibility study is complete, staff will have a better idea of the improvements needed to implement a Category II approach system, Hannah said. 

“There are some interesting challenges [that are] very unique to the airport that we’ll be discussing how we can overcome, especially in the absence of an air traffic control tower,” he said. “One of the outcomes of this feasibility study may be that the airport achieves an air traffic control tower at some point in the future.”

First District Supervisor Rex Bohn asked who would foot the bill for the improvements and whether the county could receive funding from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). 

“That’s going to be our goal,” Roggatz said. “There are multiple components that make [the Category 1] system up on our airfield and it’s all owned by the FAA. Ultimately, we would try to keep it that way. … It’ll be a little bit more elaborate when we start the in-depth conversations with the FAA, but our plan is to start the conversation by laying those two datasets side by side and essentially [asking], ‘Tell us why we can’t do this.’ It shows and highlights … how important this [upgrade] really is to our community.”

Bohn asked if staff had any idea how much the entire improvement project would cost. Hannah said the project would “definitely be in the multiple millions of dollars,” reiterating that the goal is to have the FAA “provide as much funding as possible.” Additional enhancements, including the construction of an air traffic control tower, would cost even more.

Bohn asked if it was true that the majority of flight delays to the Bay Area are caused by SFO rather than ACV. Roggatz confirmed, adding that SFO has capacity constraints that “often impact smaller markets like us.”

“As we brought on Los Angeles and Denver … with their direct flights, our on-time performance and our cancellation rates have improved because not everything is going to and from SFO,” Roggatz continued. “The majority of the struggles that we’ve had have been related to SFO. We’re trying to take that next step as we explore this option to make sure that it’s always an SFO issue and never an ACV issue.”

Before closing out the discussion, Roggatz reiterated that there will be no commercial air service at ACV between Aug. 14 and Aug. 25 to accommodate a big repaving project on the airport’s main runway. You can read more about the Runway and Electrical Rehabilitation Project here.

The board unanimously agreed to file the report but did not take any further action on the item.

SB 252: Fossil Fuels Divestment

The board also narrowly approved a letter of support of a Senate bill that would prohibit the boards of the California Public Employee Retirement System (CalPERS) and the California State Teachers’ Retirement System (CalSTRS) from making new investments – or renewing existing investments – in fossil fuel companies and would require that the two boards liquidate all such investments by July 1, 2031, according to the text of SB 252. 

The letter, initiated by Third District Supervisor Mike Wilson and Fifth District Supervisor and Board Chair Steve Madrone, offers its “wholehearted” support of the bill, noting that the requirement “is one part of the state’s broader efforts to decarbonize the California economy and to transition to clean, pollution-free energy resources.”

“There [are] a lot of retirement funds across the United States – both public and private – that are moving in this direction,” Wilson said. “Divestiture from these types of things is common but also something that deserves discussion.”

Speaking during the public comment portion of the discussion, retired public school teacher Debroah Dukes lamented the fact that she has to spend her retirement fighting against the fossil fuel industry rather than “having fun and doing useless things.”

“I spent my career devoted to the next generation and, by extension, the generations after that,” she said. “I divested from fossil fuels against the advice of my financial advisor … and it bothers me tremendously that my pension … is benefiting from fossil fuel money. … I would urge you to write this letter of support.”

Second District Supervisor Michelle Bushnell, who pulled the item from the consent calendar for further discussion, said she wanted more time to investigate the item before signing a letter of support.

“My community is a very rural area that is very dependent on different sources,” she said. “While I support the … values [of this bill], I am not supportive of not investigating a little farther and deeper before I put my name to something.”

Bohn agreed and said he’d like some more information as well. “There’s just too shallow of a pool of information here for me,” he said. “There’s too many questions without answers.”

Fourth District Supervisor Natalie Arroyo said she understood the importance “of wanting to ensure that our retired employees have good returns on their investments” but emphasized the importance of pushing the state toward its climate goals.

“I think every element in every way of approaching this helps and gets us closer to our goals,” she said. “It’s one thing to say individuals should be responsible for their own actions with a wide variety of financial capacities and abilities to make those types of changes in their lives. It’s quite another to say that, you know, the state should look at higher-level policies around investments. I support this fully and I appreciate the urging to do all we can around this.”

Arroyo made a motion to approve the letter of support, which was seconded by Wilson. The motion passed in a 3-2 vote, with Bohn and Bushnell dissenting.

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Other odds and ends from the meeting:

• The board also received an update on the county’s pilot program with Hambro Recycling and CalRecycle to accommodate California Refund Value (CRV) services in the county. The board reviewed existing Recycling Convenience Zones throughout the county and whether or not the zones should be expanded. In a somewhat complex motion, the board voted to continue the pilot program, to extend the Recycling Convenience Zones “as broad as possible,” and to connect with other rural counties through the California State Association of Counties (CSAC) and the Rural County Representatives of California (RCRC) to “get a team together” and initiate legislation to ensure “that these remote areas can be serviced.”
• Several members of SEIU Local 2015 spoke during the public comment portion of the meeting to urge the board to support in-home supportive care workers and ensure seniors and people with disabilities can access the life-saving care they need. The group began chanting in board chambers. Madrone asked the group to stop chanting but said, “Thank you. We hear you.”
• At the end of the meeting, Bohn noted that improvements to the Ferndale Fairgrounds will wrap up at the end of this week, about a week ahead of opening day at the Humboldt County Fair.

PREVIOUSLY:

• Local Group Announces Intent to Stop the City of Eureka’s Conversion of Downtown Parking Lots Into Housing With New Ballot Measure
• Wiyot Tribe Makes Its Case, Convinces Eureka Council to Reject Staff Pick and Award Affordable Housing Development Projects to Tribal Land Trust Agency

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Press release from the “Housing For All” campaign:

The Housing for All and Downtown Vitality campaign has started. The City of Eureka has provided the final paperwork that allows the campaign to begin collecting signatures for the ballot initiative. Approximately 1,600 valid voter signatures are needed to place the measure on the ballot.

The Housing for All ballot initiative is a comprehensive update to the Housing Element of the City’s General Plan. It includes rezoning 8.5 acres of the former Jacobs Middle School property for housing and provisions to preserve parking on public lots downtown where housing has been proposed. If passed by the voters, the Housing for All Initiative will enable Eureka to provide several hundred badly needed affordable housing units for all income levels.

“The initiative has changed slightly from the original one we submitted to the City on July 14,” explained Mike Munson, initiative co-signer. “The City recently awarded the contract for developing the 5th and D parking lots and the 6th and L lot to the Wiyot Tribe. Our revised initiative provides that those two lots will be exempt from the ballot measure as long as the Wiyot Tribe owns them. We support their efforts in building affordable housing in an environmentally friendly manner while protecting their heritage and keeping the work local.”

According to Munson, the Housing for All and Downtown Vitality campaign focuses on housing. He said that while the downtown parking lots are part of the initiative, the goal is to make a bad housing element plan better and bring that plan to the voters.

“There is much misinformation about the initiative we would like to correct,” said Michelle Costantine, initiative co-signer. “This is genuinely about housing for all and does not prevent the development of the downtown parking lots.” The downtown lots would remain sites for affordable housing to attract families downtown. Still, the initiative requires parking to be provided to the residents and preserve the 640 spaces that will be lost.

According to Costantine and Munson, the use of the former Jacobs Middle School site will provide the following:

· Stable family housing,

· Increase property values in the area,

· Badly needed funds for the City Schools, and

· Make the neighborhood safer.

“The City Schools are under capacity, and plenty of classrooms are available for the growth this housing will bring,” added Munson. “More housing means more students, and that’s a good thing.”

To read the initiative and learn more about signing, visit www.eurekahousingforall2024.org.

Below you will find a lengthy press release about the opening of a new Mountain Mike’s Pizza in McKinleyville. LoCO has had Mountain Mike’s Pizza. It’s fine. Fast, in our experience. And now, if you live in McKinleyville, you, too, can also conveniently acquire it.

If you’d like to read more words about the Mountain Mike’s and its various features —  like, say, its “whopping 15 big-screen televisions” — read on:

Mountain Mike’s Pizza, a leading family-style pizza chain for over 45 years, known for its legendary crispy, curly pepperonis, Mountain-sized pizzas, and dough made fresh daily, is excited to announce that its new McKinleyville restaurant is now open for business. The new restaurant is owned and operated by brothers and multi-unit franchisees Aamir and Bashir Khan of Khan Venture Group, whose Mountain Mike’s franchise portfolio now expands to four restaurants, complementing existing Northern California locations in Eureka, Rohnert Park and Fortuna, which opened earlier this year. Whether dining in the restaurant, carrying out or having it delivered directly to their door, the new Mountain Mike’s Pizza is the ideal destination for McKinleyville locals and visitors alike to enjoy the brand’s signature experience of “Pizza the Way it Oughta Be!®

“We’re extremely eager to welcome the McKinleyville community to our new Mountain Mike’s Pizza restaurant as we strive to make this location a destination for the community to gather for all of life’s joyous moments, memorable celebrations and other meaningful occasions for many years to come,” said Aamir Khan. “Mountain Mike’s Pizza serves menu items that are second-to-none when it comes to quality and taste, and we have watched as more communities continue to fall in love with Mountain Mike’s, which is why we are delighted to help grow the brand along the Northern California Coast.”

The spacious 4,600 square-foot Mountain Mike’s Pizza in McKinleyville features the same welcoming, family-friendly atmosphere the brand is known for, and it’s bound to be a go-to destination for sports fans. Featuring a whopping 15 big-screen televisions, the McKinleyville restaurant is the perfect venue no matter which team guests want to root for. The new location also includes an all-you-can-eat pizza and salad lunch buffet, wine, domestic beer and local craft beer on tap, a 1,000-square-foot kids’ arcade, complimentary Wi-Fi and a private party room. Clearly, there’s something for everyone at Mountain Mike’s in McKinleyville, making it an ideal spot for guests of all ages, team parties, family get-togethers, office gatherings and group fundraising events alike.
One bite into a cheesy slice of pizza from Mountain Mike’s takes you back to your childhood, when pizzas were hand-made and with the freshest and finest ingredients. From its legendary crispy, curly pepperoni, 100% whole milk mozzarella cheese and a variety of fan-favorite specialty pizzas, Mountain Mike’s has something to satisfy every taste. Whether it’s dine-in, catering, carryout or its own in-house delivery, guests can always count on Mountain Mike’s to ensure quality, freshness, flavor and value. Orders may be placed online, through the Mountain Mike’s Pizza App, or through any of the brand’s third-party delivery partners.

The new McKinleyville Mountain Mike’s is located at 1500 Anna Sparks Way and can be reached by telephone at (707) 203-8500. The restaurant is open daily from 11:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. For additional information about Mountain Mike’s Pizza, visit www.mountainmikespizza.com. For additional information about the new McKinleyville location, go here  or find them on Google and Yelp.